For many people — particularly anyone over the age of 30 — the idea of describing your blow-by-blow activities in such detail is absurd. Why would you subject your friends to your daily minutiae?
(From the Article)
I'd say this is indicative of the change in our social interaction. This generation is the first to concern itself with the hour by hour status of digital information. When a parent does get on facebook, we all whisper a silent prayer in hopes that our parents never join the site. Because it would change how the college or high school student would interact with their digital selfs.
Even the daily catalogue of sandwiches became oddly mesmerizing
(From the Article)
I think that this touches on the impact of every interaction that we create on the internet. No longer are we subjected to the code...rather we are infused with it, a part of it, assimilated by it. Our real life identity is tied so strongly with these pixels and binary bits stored on a screen or a server, that we can't look away from it. A status update becomes as normal as taking note of a windy day or the feeling of brushing our teeth. It could be noticeable, but it sinks into the background like it simply belongs.
My overall...number is thus 301: Facebook (254) + Twitter (47), double what it would be without technology. Yet only 20 are family or people I'd consider close friends. The rest are weak ties — maintained via technology.
(From the Article)
"Maintained via technology" is an interesting concept, because technology does not maintain these relationships, we do. But the author and all of us identify with technology so closely that it becomes an extension of us. It is an omni-present entity that we trust, a vanguard of our information and social lives.
"I outsource my entire life," she said. "I can solve any problem on Twitter in six minutes." (She also keeps a secondary Twitter account that is private and only for a much smaller circle of close friends and family — "My little secret," she said. It is a strategy many people told me they used: one account for their weak ties, one for their deeper relationships.)
(From the Article)
More examples of the the simbiance of both users and code. The digital network information is simply users and code becoming one in the same. One acting upon the other, to create a network of connections that becomes "bigger" or more meaningful than the code itself, and the code becomes as important as real life for its users.
The interaction cannot be created by the code (bots?), and the interaction could not be created simply by the user.
She had broken up with her boyfriend not long ago, but she hadn't "unfriended" him, because that felt too extreme.
(From the Article)
The aforementioned is a perfect example, the code is simply that...code or a sires of symbols. This code or connection has completely taken over what might seem like a prudent emotional choice. De-friend and the symbol disappears, but then the ex is no longer survivable, symbolization without representation becomes a problem. And much like in V for vendetta, the symbol has power. Ideas have power.
A building is a symbol, as is the act of destroying it. Symbols are given power by people. A symbol, in and of itself is powerless, but with enough people behind it, blowing up a building can change the world.
Maybe rather than "blowing up a building" it could be "changing a twitter status" or "writing a note".
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